


Just Once

by aNightofDarkTrees



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25054699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aNightofDarkTrees/pseuds/aNightofDarkTrees
Summary: He knew the second he saw her on the staircase he could live to regret meeting Stevie McCord. Yet in that same moment, he was equally sure his life would have been woefully incomplete without the chance encounter. A look Stevie and Dmitri through the series from his perspective.
Relationships: Stevie McCord/Dmitri Petrov
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> I have always loved Stevie and Dmitri, and there were moments where I thought the show did well. But there were also moments I thought they butchered it. I wanted to examine it exactly as it happened in the TV show from his perspective. This is the first part with the second obviously taking place over season 6. I am also working on a story featuring a slight time divergence from the show and a rougher Dmitri (the Dmitri I think he should have been) so stay tuned! I have no beta so I bet I missed some typos.
> 
> As always reviews are awesome. There is something about Dmitri that just got me inspired. Let me know what you think!

He knew the second he saw her on the staircase he could live to regret meeting Stevie McCord. Yet, in that same moment, he was equally sure his life would have been woefully incomplete without the chance encounter.

Months later, in what felt like a different lifetime he saw her again. An angel sent to remind him of the demon that he was becoming. The torture had finally broken him in the form of addition, and it was in that haze of dependency he saw her again a mirage of a different life with a shockingly normal look of questioning amusement as he pulled his head out from inside the cooler.

“That’s a good way to cool off,” she said with sparkling eyes.

He didn’t remembered her name, but he hadn’t forgotten her face, and in his drug induced fog she seemed brighter and clearer than the world that surrounded them and he stared.

“Alexander… right?” She had asked moving forward.

She was bright and whole, and it was awkward and uncomfortable. She was Henry’s daughter. She was the daughter of the man who had stollen his life and given it back to him. And yet, the anger and rage that had been beating on him since the confrontation in the bar hours ago faded at her simple presence.

But he was a broken man, a broken human being. And his own personal angel had reminded him he was capable of more in 10 seconds in a grocery store.

It didn’t matter that she was engaged. It didn’t matter that he would never have that kind of love. For a second, even as far gone as he was, he had seen himself, and he would let it go no further.

********

Outside the McCord house the night her fiancée leaves her he is briefly grateful for the level of self control his occupation has given him.

He is sober and the burning light that seemed to surround her in the grocery store is dim if not gone. In that moment, she is just Henry’s daughter, an innocent naive girl not only off limits due to her recent heartbreak, but to all the rules even thinking about her would cross. He says have a goodnight and he walks away.

But she stops him, and when he turns it is then that he is grateful for his experience in self control because she is once again burning, but not with a drug induced light. It is the desire in her eyes that burns through him. She isn’t subtle or coy, the invitation is clear.

He is grateful that he is shocked enough that the answers that come from his lips are not his own, rather a trained, programed, response though it does not come as easily as it should.

His suggestion of some other time comes equally unbidden when the look a sad disappointment crosses her face, and he nearly bites his tongue to force any other stupid suggestions from spilling from his mouth.

She nods, but still takes his phone and types in her number.

He won’t use it. He swears. He’ll delete it. He doesn’t. But he doesn’t text her, he doesn’t reach out and he counts that as a victory.

It’s not one she lets him keep.

********

He shouldn’t go, he knows he shouldn’t. He’s texted an apology cancelation text 10 times, but it remains unsent. And now it's too late. He has reduced his options to standing her up or showing up. And he can’t stand her up, and not just because he doesn’t want to.

Standing a girl up is something they remember, it is something they tell their friends and family about, it is something that might well get mentioned to Henry. So he goes, because now he has no choice, and maybe subconsciously that was the plan all along.

And he is late. And she is beautiful. Too beautiful. And he lets her talk him out of it. It will be secret. It will be casual. And dear god he wants it so he stays for the drink, and then he stays for the date and she is amazing.

She is funny and witty. She is independent and firm on what she believes even down to the validity of peanut butter as an example of American ingenuity. And in the course of those hours he falls for her in a way that he knows is dangerous. In a way that goes against everything he knows about this world.

He can’t stand to walk away. And she almost breaks him with her intoxicating closeness and the vulnerability in her eyes, but now he knows he can walk away. That he must, because to stay with her is to burn her. To stay will be to love her unconditionally if it is not already too late for that.

To stay is to burden her with his many secrets and scars and his status of nationless. And now that he knows her, he knows he must walk away. But it is she that leaves, a twisted smile on her face. And he stands there for far too long breathing through this new pain.

But he is used to pain. He is used to the suffering and this is nothing new right? It’s nothing new.

********

He was wrong. This is new. It reminds him of addiction in a way, it never leaves his mind and he is tormented by her hair, her eyes, the sent of her on the evening breeze, and he is tortured by it.

Why can he not have her. Even if it’s just once. Has he not earned at least that small portion of joy? That moment of peace? When his body was being broken. His joints and ligaments stretched and snapped. His ribs cracked and broken he had lamented he had no memories like this. For those where the memories the men around him had clung to the most.

He was no virgin. No one in his position was, but the rapture he saw in the tormented eyes of his fellow comrades at the description of some particular moment or women, he longed for that desperately. Whatever release from the confines of their bodies and minds those memories had offered, was unobtainable to him. 

And he knew she offered that. Not just the sex, but the memory of more. And it was that thought that finally broke him.

He had lived a life of strict rules of survival since infancy. He did not feel, he did not become invested in others or in situations. He had learned that life was cruel and to survive you must be immune to the cruelty.

But just once, if he felt what it was that he felt just once, perhaps those memories would protect him the next time his body was broken and bruised and his sanity ripped from him.

Perhaps he would know enough joy, even if just for a moment that he could count his life in a measure other than service.

So he texted.

He didn’t say much. He didn’t explain. It was simple. A time a place the conjunction of which would guarantee she understood his desire for discretion. She responded with a smile.

********

He was late. He almost backed out again. Whatever rational part of his trained mind was still fighting made its displeasure known. But it was too late. He had made his decision. Besides she might not even be there. Perhaps she had left tired of waiting for him.

Perhaps that was best.

But she was there. Sitting in the corner a picture of beauty. Waiting. And in the moment he took her in he felt the last vestiges of his restraint evaporate completely.

Yes. He was late again. Perhaps he often would be so he didn’t deny it when she asked if this was going to be his thing. Arriving on time for appointments out side of verified governmental meetings was known to be hazardous to your health.

And when she asked what had changed, as he guessed that she would, he told her the truth. He stopped thinking about it. He stopped think about all of it besides what it would mean to be near her touching her again.

His whispered acquiescence sent goose bumps racing across her body as his warm breath brushed against her throat. He placed a hand on her knee under the table and the haze of lust the clouded her eyes set his blood thrumming in a thrilling uncomfortable way.

It was too late for him now. And based on the pulse he felt thrumming against his fingers just a little higher up her thigh than was strictly appropriate for their surroundings. It was too late for her as well.

He did not move as she turned from him to grab her drink, and he watched in fascination, his head resting on her shoulder, the quivering pulse and bobbing motion of her throat. Almost unconsciously his lips brushed the skin of her neck, his tongue reaching out to taste her skin.

He watched as her eyes went wide and felt the sigh of her body as she leaned into his embrace still cradling her wine glass.

“You aren’t going to drink that are you?” She asked softly gesturing to the other wine glass.

He shook his head. Like he needed any other inhibiting substance coursing through his body.

She nodded finished her glass and reaching for the full one.

********

He saw her nearly everyday now, and even when he had to disappear for a few days tracking down their newest Russian asset, he missed her terribly. He knew it was bad, but he was beyond caring.

And when he came back, and they went out that first night she didn’t bring up his absence until the end, when she was getting in her ride. He wanted to ask her to stay. He wanted to tell her everything he wanted this to be what he was so sure it was already becoming.

And when she kissed him like that, when the awkwardness that had permeated their dance since the beginning disappeared in the passion that they both found undeniable, he wanted more. Needed more. And she had offered it, in the sly I’m open to you asking for more kind of insinuations women usually made.

He had resisted for weeks now.

Had it only been 2 weeks?

But this was enough, and as she kissed him he promised more. And when she confirmed their date for the next night. Alone in an apartment. He felt the thrill of what was to come.

Should she be scared?

Not of the food.

********

Things never went as they should in his life though. They never had and they never would. He did not cook for her. He didn’t even meet her downstairs. What was he doing?

What was he doing with Stephanie McCord? The daughter of the Secretary of State. The daughter of his DIA/CIA/ whatever handler.

What was he thinking.

The pictures of his dead ally were burned in his head. The blood and the marks of torture.

The car battery with blood crusted wires.

This was his life. He knew how Matvey had suffered. He knew the pain. He knew that Matvey had likely told them what they needed to know, but it was more than that. He knew he was being followed and he knew they had seen her.

What was he doing.

He knew he had to break it off. He wouldn’t have thought he would have had the strength but he did now.

The photos of the dead girl flashed in his head with the voice of his co-workers, “She probably didn’t even know anything.”

They would not discriminate if hurting her hurt him. And his carelessness proved that he cared for her too much already.

They bloodied blonde in the photos probably didn’t know who Matvey was, just as Stevie didn’t know him, and that fear was enough. She would come up those stairs and he would end it. This time he would.

He didn’t.

********

He justified it with his touch of his hands against her skin that night in the apartment. He was stronger than Matvey. This girl, this woman in his arms writhing with his touch was powerful in her own rights. She wasn’t nameless. She couldn’t be.

With each stroke of his hand. Each gasped and whimpered plea for more or less or a break from the rapture he promised himself no harm would come to her from him. That they were different. He rationalized until his brain was no longer capable of seeing anything other than her body wrapped around his.

He told himself excuses until he heard nothing but her.

He buried his misgiving in her body and allowed the heat between them to burn them. To burn everything but reality of him and her.

There was no coming back anymore. This was different. The need drove them again and again. She was insatiable, and his body rose up to her touch until he was begging for sleep and she was giggling against him.

There was no coming back anymore.

He had allowed himself to feel what he felt just once.

He was going to make the most of it.

********

He was not careful. He don’t know why he agreed to go back to the same place over and over. The lives of young people in DC was so in between and they were no different. She worked at the White House and lived with her parents. He was a high level turned asset, who lived with a sister.

And now that this had started… there was no way they could stop.

He told himself it was temporary, the Potomac Lodge, he told himself he had already been looking for his own place and this was only for a few more weeks.

He really was looking for a place. A place to buy. To make a new home.

And he found a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And it was perfect. He would take her there for a weekend. See if she loved it like he already did. And he would buy it.

They would still work in DC. Rent and apartment together or something somehow. But he would buy the home far from this world they lived in and it would be just him and her.

Every time they were together it wasn’t enough. Every time he left starving for more.

But it couldn’t last.

Just once was never going to be enough. His world wouldn’t let him have that.

********

It came crashing down like it was always meant to. Like he had known it could from the start, but it broke his heart anyway. They came for him, the CIA, protective custody, and he knew then that they would know. They would know about Stevie and somewhere she was also being protected.

At least there was that.

The hatred and anger in Henry’s face was what he had expected. His disgust at the mention of the motel. His accusation that it had somehow been revenge for what the McCords had done to his life.

He knew how it looked, but he had thought that Henry would at least understand some of it. If Henry thought he would ever intentionally endanger Stevie….

He had no idea.

The look on his face must have convinced Henry, but it wasn’t enough. He was done here. And he doubted he would ever see the women he loved so desperately every again.

He had promised himself just this once. Just this once so he had the memories. Had that light in his soul to sustain him.

So he promised himself again. Just once he would feel this pain. Just once.

It hadn’t been long enough. He was built to take this pain. He wouldn’t let on how his insides were being torn apart. That was his skill. That was what made him such a good spy. So he smiled and thanked the generosity of his American tortures.

Was it fair to call them that? Perhaps not.

He smiled and said he had always wanted to visit Alaska.

And his insides screamed obscenities at him the whole time.

********

He hadn’t expected a send off. Hadn’t expected any kinds of good byes. He hadn’t really even expected to see Henry again.

He figured he would go in the middle of his night like his kind usually did. But it was different.

It might have been better if he had gone in the night. Might have been easier.

But he didn’t.

Henry made it clear they were even, but he also made it clear that he would not abandon his promise to Talia. Maybe Stevie had spoken for him. Tempered Henry’s anger.

That seemed likely. Stevie McCord was powerful when roused.

He hadn’t expected at all what came next.

When she walked out the door he was shocked. He struggled to let his surprise be the overwhelming expression on his face knowing he was being watched and not really wanting Henry to know the strength of this thing that was already between him and Stevie.

She didn’t look at her dad other than to dismiss him with her eyes and send him through the door when he lingered.

He saw it all on her face. The understanding and shock and pain. All that he felt was plastered on her face for him to see.

The words he said were inadequate and he prayed that she saw behind them. And when she kissed him. When he knew this was their last kiss it almost broke him. Broke him for real.

And he told her goodbye.

And he told her his name.

He was grateful when he was stashed in the cargo hold. There was another Russian there, his glasses and general physic labeling him and an analyst. The analyst didn’t say anything and neither did he as he sat head craned back to the ceiling watching the swimming cargo ropes.

Tears streaming down his face. 


	2. Seperation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stevie/Dmitri Season 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here is part 2. I thought it would be over the last season, but there is actually some pretty significant stuff in season 5 that I forgot about even though it really just takes place in the one episode. Anyway yay! 2 chapters 2 days, and I will have the third and final out tomorrow. If you like this story don't forget to stay tuned for my other Dmitri project :)

Alaska is quiet. When he gets to the barracks there is a poster overhead of the second door entrance that proclaims, _Welcome to the Island of Misfit Toys!_

He doesn’t feel welcome. He has to look up what this means, and after sometime it makes sense. His barracks are those that are stationed here more or less permanently.

The military personal in the other barracks rotate in and out, but the Island of Misfit Toys is for those that remain.

He feels like it fits.

The days are monotonous in a way that is eerily similar to his long days of torture. At least this time his daily routine doesn’t include his blood on any floor.

He holds her memory close. And just as he had hoped they almost make it worth it. He can tell the others that have these kind of memories that he now hordes, and which of those are like him before, empty or clinging to some slight childhood joy.

The winter comes and it almost makes him nostalgic. He reads Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He finds the words almost comforting. It's a very Russian thing, tragedy. He decides the Italian classics were mere parody of Russian suffering. Another member of the misfits lends him a battered copy of Paradise Lost. It twists and turns and he loves it but…

It is not comforting.

There is little comfort for him anymore.

**********

A year passes. 12 months. And he doesn’t understand how that happened.

How did that happen?

The people come and go. The misfits remain. He doesn’t read much anymore. He writes. He writes the pain of his life. He writes the truth of everything. Even the parts he hates. Even the parts that make parts of his body ache with memories of the pain.

At one point he spends a month categorizing every scar on his body. It’s an interesting pursuit at times. In the end, he finds himself wishing he had a scar from her. He thinks about giving himself one, but decides against it.

It wouldn’t be the same if it was his hands that left the mark.

One of the misfits is going into the little excuse for a town that accompanies the base. There is a guy at the local bar, a truck driver staying for a little while with the guy who owns the bar. He was a well known tattoo artist at one point and this misfit loves tattoos. All kinds.

He goes with them. Tattoos are a Russian thing too, right? Maybe her mark on his skin should be in ink.

But he can’t decide what to get it of, and nothing seems to fit. So he leaves, skin unmarked.

He is not at peace, but he begins to think of a future. They will let him go at some point and where will he go? And when his mind searches through all the possibilities there is really only one place.

The Blue Ridge Mountains. He won’t go back to the heat. You couldn’t make him. And her memory is there. Curious he checks to see if that little cabin he looked at is still for sale.

When he discovers it is he makes an offer that day.

The papers are signed a week later and he now owns 14 acres bordered by national forest and park.

The powers that be are suspicious they ask why. He is a Russian, expanding his investment pro folio. Are they really offering him retirement?

No on asks anymore questions.

************

Some one bombs the fucking White House. Some one bombs it and people die. People are dead. And where is Stevie.

Where. Is. Stevie.

WHERE IS SHE!?!

The news hits the base almost immediately just as it did every other base in the country. They are briefed. The president is alive, the prime minsters of India and Pakistan are also. There are two staffers who died in the blast and two more in critical condition at the hospital.

Names are not released.

But he feels sick. He knows something is wrong. He knows in that place that saved his life on more than one occasion that something is not right.

He scans the news constantly. He tells his superior (who knows where he came from) to please let him know if there are any names released.

His boss makes no promises.

**********

The next day the names of the two dead staffers are released. He doesn’t recognize either of them. The article says the names of the staffers in critical condition will be released at a press conference later that day.

He pushes refresh on the page every ten minutes for nearly five hours. And then it shows up, everyone is fine and has been released with the exception of June O’Callaghan and Stephanie McCord.

Stevie is not ok. She is unconscious in a hospital, wounded.

And he is here on the other side of the continent. And it makes him sick.

For the next four days he watches the news on the attack ceaselessly, he calls in every favor he can think of. They all promise as soon as they know anything they will tell him. But it seems no one knows anything other than she is in the hospital recovering.

On the third day June dies and Stevie is downgraded to stable and he can breath again. A friend sends him and encrypted message saying that she was seriously wounded, but that they are releasing her from the hospital in the next couple of days. And this helps. The information helps.

Almost as much as it destroys him that this basic tangential intel is all that he gets from the women he loves more than life itself.

He knew this is how it would be. He’d only now gotten used to the pain of losing her, but this pain. The pain of not knowing when things were serious, when big things happened in her life. This pain is new, and he wasn’t prepared for it.

Somewhere deep down, even though he knew it wasn’t rational at all, he had somehow assumed that if something happened to her someone would let him know. Someone would tell him exactly what happened, but not to worry because this is how it turned out.

In some way, the bombing breaks the last little bit of his heart. Because it cements what he had somewhere already known. The people in her life, no longer considered him part of her life. The people in his life, did not consider her information as having anything to do with him.

To the world, he was nothing to her. He had no claim.

And that destroyed him.

**********

Talia knows something has broken in her brother the next time they speak. They don’t get to speak often, about once a month or so, and as soon as he opens his mouth on the other end of the phone she can hear his lifelessness.

“Ya ne znayu bol'she, sestra, vozmozhno, moya zhizn' proklyata… moye yedinstvennoye schast'ye - yeye vospominaniya”

She tries to to tell him he is wrong, that there is still happiness in this world, but he doesn’t hear her. He has told her all that Stephanie was to him. He has told her what only he and Stevie know, the truth of what it was between them.

It wasn’t shady sex in a motel, it was everything. It was the unlikeliest of connections between the unlikeliest of souls. He tells her and then he begs her to do something he never thought he would.

He begs her to find Stevie. It isn’t technically breaking his deal. Just look at her, watch her. Is she truly alright? Does she have a limp or a terrible scar? Did she lose a finger or a toe?

And Talia hears the desperation in his voice. He is losing it with the not knowing, and how can she deny him. He saved her life and great cost to his own. She lost him once, and she would do anything to prevent that from happening again.

She owes him so much.

How can she say no.

She puts it off for weeks until it is the day before she will speak to him again. And she follows Stevie all around town. She is quick and Talia keeps having to chase her down each time answering another of his questions.

She doesn’t have a limp, for sure. There are no horrible scars on her face, she can’t speak about the toes, but she definitely has all her fingers, and that’s enough. She shouldn’t be doing this anyway.

And when she talks to Dmitri in the morning the supreme relief in his voice, like he can breath again makes it worth it.

Until the next day at the coffee shop when she wants to curse her brother and his terribly misfortunate life.

**********

He is quietly monitoring a computer screen jotting down translations of the conversations he is listening to when he feels the atmosphere in the room change and looks up to see two large men with the thick black arms bands. He knows who they are even before he makes out the white letters MP.

He immediately starts mentally kicking his own ass. Of course they were watching Talia, and of course she wasn’t discrete. He had tried to give her pointers, but in that town, it would have been painfully obvious that she was trying to follow someone.

And of course Stevie had her own security.

The captain that interrogates him seems to find the whole thing humorous from the second he walks through the door, which he supposes is a good sign.

“You really tell your sister to check for fingers and toes?” The officer asks with a chuckle.

He checks the golden band on the man’s dark hand, “Would it interest you sir, if your wife had lost any fingers and toes? If she had been blown up in a terrorist attack on one of the world’s most secure buildings?”

The captain stops smiling and looks at his face reading the pain there for the first time. He nods gesturing to the the chair across the table.

“Yes, I suppose I would want even the fingers and toes accounted for.”

They don’t ask him many questions, it’s plainly clear to everyone that this is not a Russian espionage operation fairly quickly, and the captain doesn’t push the issue on why he felt it was worth the risk. The moments he spends with the young Russian give enough insight as to the why.

In fact, the young man’s pain is touching enough that when he reports to Washington he adds that perhaps allowing some other form a communication, even if it is just a one time thing, might given the man some closure and prevent future incidents such as these.

Apparently the powers that be agree because he is given the clear to write her one letter.

He can’t decide if that will make things better or worse.

In the end it’s both.

**********

He writes that letter a hundred times. They give him no page limit, no guidelines, but he knows it will not be private. He knows at least one set of eyes other than hers and his will view this message. Sometimes that makes him write letters that are almost chaste and friendly, besides, he doesn’t know if she is moving on.

He doesn’t know if she ever really forgave him for endangering her life and lying to her.

Sometimes though the presence of an invisible audience angers him into writing letters that detail everything. His memories of her body rising up against hers. His dreams of her late at night the feeling of her in the deepest parts of his soul.

The letters are passionate love letters, and apologies. They are thank you letters and the letters one might send to a penpal or a long lost friend.

Nothing seems right.

But after a few days he knows what he wants to say so he does. He secretly hopes neither Henry or Elizabeth read it, though his actions have probably already revealed him, he would rather the explicit truth of the depth of his feeling remain with her and her alone.

He tells her he loves her. He tells her he’s sorry. He tells her he misses her desperately. He tells her of the memories and way he misses the feeling of his hands on her perfect skin. He tells her how these memories save him even as they break him. He tells her it’s ok for her to hate him or miss him or wish she could forget all about him.

And then he tells her maybe she should. Forget all about him.

He will never forget her, but he knows that he can offer her no future. There is no future for them so he tells her to move on.

He tells her that’s okay, and that it doesn’t mean that she didn’t love him like he will always love her, but she deserves more.

She always deserved more than him.

He doesn’t cry as he writes, but when the letter is gone, after he hands it to the dark skinned captain with the knowing eyes, and he is alone in his room. He cries and the tears and silent sobs choke him until they knock him unconscious.

He will not cry for her again.

He is too numb for it now.

**********

He wasn’t prepared for a letter back. A letter from him to her was shocking enough given the liberties he had taken, but a response had never crossed his mind.

When the captain called his name and he took the envelope he had hoped suddenly and wildly that it was a letter from her, but he hadn’t believe it until he opened and caught a glimpse of her looping handwriting.

She was right he didn’t believe the generosity of the powers that be.

Her letter was different than his. She explained the bombing and her injury. She told him that he missed him and that he regretted that they would never have their shot.

She told him that she wasn’t angry. She never would be. She kept it light, made a joke about peanut butter and her research into the tradition of Russian exile.

She apologized and wrote of how furious it made her when anyone tried to tell her it was all his fault. That she had been some innocent victim.

It was condescending and patriarchal. It attempted to define her role in a relationship no one had know anything about. And that pissed her off.

Her rant made him smile. Even though she was wrong. She hadn’t known and he did.

She said she would move on she just needed time. She said she hoped that one day he would be free to do the same.

He wouldn’t, but he appreciated the sentiment.

She signed it “To the part of my heart that will always be yours” and that was enough.

The letter was enough. It was something solid some proof of the love he had.

And it was more than he ever thought he would get. And it eased his pain to think she wasn’t in his kind of agony.

And that was enough.


	3. Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!! So this is the last chapter I think. I could do another one, but honestly I really don't like how the show rushed/handled the relationship after the Deepfake episode. So I am pretty sure I am going to leave it here. Like I have said before I am working on another Dmitri story that is definitely a bit OC, but its the Dmitri I think he should have been. So stay tuned for that. Thank you to those that have read. Hope you all like what I came up with.

He watches Elizabeth McCord become President of the Untied States of America. He knows she will be good at the job. Having been one himself at one time, he knows that she can make the necessary sacrifices.

And he knows that Stevie exists in a different world now. She always did, even as just the secretary of state’s daughter, but now… as a first daughter for the entire country…?

If there was ever any chance things might have changed, it disappears as he watches the first women president of the United States assume her position.

She will make an amazing president. And an amazing commander and chief.

He turns back to his desk after watching her acceptance speech. The glimpse of Stevie beautiful, her golden hair glowing in the sunlight was too painful.

She looked happy and he hoped that she was. He hoped she got the chance at a beautiful life. One that would be far greater than anything he could have ever offered her.

The man sitting a station over is talking across the privacy divider to a new airman assigned to the radar screen.

“What a gene pool, I mean look the whole family is beautiful. Those kids are so lucky.”

He wonders if he would even notice her if things had been different.

No. There is no doubt. He would have noticed her.

**********

He thinks that maybe the election of Elizabeth McCord pushes Stevie so far away from him that he allows himself to recognize he can’t actually be celibate the rest of his life.

I mean, that’s ridiculous.

So the next time the gang bundles up and heads to the little bar in the dinky little town a couple of miles down the road, he goes along. There is a waitress there that reminded him of Stevie the first time he went there and she seemed interested in him.

She is there. She goes by a ridiculous name. Bitty?

She reminds him of the girls back home. The girls that don’t trust men regardless of how they act, the ones that see men as means to an end. But she is fun, and in her own way beautiful.

Bitty thinks he is interesting and mysterious and that suites her. She is the first thing he has that is something like a friend. But she isn’t Stevie, she isn’t the her that he longs for, and she knows it. Women can tell when you look at them and see someone else. And lonely women, women like Bitty, they don’t mind that, at least for a little while.

So he sees her a couple of times, and it takes the edge off.

But after about a month, one of the misfits calls Bitty his girlfriend. And that’s too much. He goes one last time to the bar in town. He tells her he is sorry, but he is no one’s girlfriend. She says he is no fun, she was just joking around when she said that anyway. She says that he needs to learn to let go of whoever it is that he will never have. She says that he should have been more clear from the start.

The whole confrontation just makes him miss Stevie.

He doesn’t go back to the bar.

**********

In the dark layers of communication that circle the globe a rumor starts among the former and current spies of Russia and the United States. Some sort of treaty is coming and it has to do with them.

At first the information is spotty and unreliable, but he begins to pay more and more attention as the bits and pieces begin to coalesce into something that makes more and more sense. It will be a treaty that grants amnesty to all former spies on both sides of the Atlantic. No more running or hiding, freedom to do as you please.

The general feeling is one of cautious optimism. For him, he is not even sure if this sort of treaty would still apply. What would his legal status become? It’s not like he is a citizen, and he can’t go back to Russia.

Regardless of what any treaty says that would be suicide and he knows it.

But then it comes out into the open. Quicker. Much quicker than he anticipated.

There is a new officer serving as his boss and the day after it is announced that the treaty will be signed he is called in to be told what it means for him.

And he is shocked at what all it means for him. It means he is free. He can apply for citizenship and then travel the world as an American. There are no strings, he owes the country nothing else. He is free to do as he wishes.

Well almost free.

His first thought is of Stevie. It seems impossible, but if she should want it there is actually the possibility of a future there. It’s not against the rules. Not as they are presented to him. Not as he understands them, but if he is going to have any chance of this then he will not make the same mistakes he did last time.

He asks the new captain if he is allowed to contact Henry. It takes a minute, but permission is eventually granted, and in 10 minutes. He is on the phone with FGOTS.

Henry has to be some kind of man to pull that off.

The conversation is brief, even as FGOTS, Henry is busy.

He thanks them for the treaty, thanks them for giving him a future, and this time he asks if he can contact Stevie.

Henry says that is up to him. She is an adult and he is no longer a threat to her safety. At least not in the sense that he was.

And that is it. He resigns. He leaves the snow packed base and heads for Anchorage where he books the first flight to Dulles.

He knows it’s probably too late. It’s been 3 years since he told her to forget about him and move on. But there is no press about her boyfriend, he’s checked. So she is single right? Or just private. He doesn’t know.

It's probably too late and she’s probably moved on, he made his peace with this.

Until he’s sitting in the airport and she posts a picture from her date.

And the dream of her slips through his fingers once again.

And maybe, maybe he tells himself over and over and over again on the long long flight. Maybe that is for the best.

She is the President’s daughter, and who is he?

Who is he?

**********

Talia is not a patient women. She welcomes him into her home, and she lets him sit on his ass for a couple of weeks as he flails around trying to figure out what’s next. But she does not leave him alone.

Especially about Stevie, but he refuses to contact her until he can tell her what it is that he is doing with his life.

And he has not a freakin clue.

It’s actually in one of the many legal offices he has to visit to get one of the many legal documents that he has to have for his citizen ship ceremony that he sees the flyer for the trip to Guyana. They need volunteers, particularly of the young and strong and unattached variety, and he fits the bill. He is surprised how easy it is, and there is an old part of his brain that finds the whole process illuminating on how aid work has become so very tangled with espionage.

So he studies for his citizenship test. He turns down his sisters daily inquires on Stevie, and he makes plans for Guyana. And occasionally… he does his dishes.

**********

He knows the boyfriend check is a ploy to get him out of the house. Apartment. Whatever. But if his sister really is dating someone new he can’t help it. He loves that she asks for his approval. He loves that he gets the chance to be the real big brother he has always wanted to be. So of course he agrees.

But when he walks into that bar, and he sees her sitting there, he is wishing he was an only child.

And it doesn’t matter that he has no business being there. It doesn’t matter that she is not his future anymore, he is drawn to her. Helplessly.

A moth to the flame.

Well a moth stopped by the large arm of a Secret Service agent anyway. And he is grateful for the man’s presence because it knocks him back down to earth.

She is not his Stevie anymore.

But his body doesn’t believe him. When she hugs him and the scent of her is everywhere his brain struggles to capture everything so he will never forget. And the whole time they speak he keeps this hands busy either trapped together or open and making movements.

Because his hands may decide they aren’t attached to his body with how much they ache to touch her.

He is polite. And distant and even bashful at the mention of his instagram stalking. All his feelings, all of everything really, is locked deep down inside in the little box where everything that matters goes when he dons the body armor of his spy self.

He hates and envies his spy self. That Dmitri is so much calmer and considerably less pathetic. Though he is awkward at times to fill the gaps that given the chance his self in the box might fill with way…wayyyy too much information.

She tells him it’s good to see him. She tells him she wishes him the best and they should definitely catch up sometime again. And she walks away with a smile and a wave.

And he really might kill Talia.

**********

He becomes a citizen and she is there. She is late. Because she had to get him something. And he can’t help thinking that she already gave him everything. He doesn’t say it, but maybe it’s in his eyes when he looks at her, because just for a moment he feels it back.

Just for a moment she seems to look at him like she once did. Like she didn’t understand what it was that was between them. Like it didn’t make any sense.

He is glad what it is between them still confuses her, something that is dead and gone, can’t be confusing to anyone.

And as he makes his pledge he wonders if maybe that makes him selfish. He told her to move on, and now he isn’t letting her, and that’s not fair. But he is leaving soon. So he decides the moments are worth it.

He wasn’t crazy you know. He wasn’t.

Even now, all these years later, she still feels it. It was real, and that gives him just as much solace as his official joining of his adopted country.

**********

It’s that moment, plus of course Talia, who will never let it go he swears. Never. That gives him the strength to call her and invite her to his farewell dinner, because she should be there. It is really she who he is saying farewell to.

And of course his dumb ass invites her to bring the guy. Of course.

He’s definitely chalking that one up to spy Dmitri and the rest of him thinks that guy is an ass at the moment.

It was awkward. So freakin awkward it was actually physically painful, and he can’t figure out if he is hoping that she doesn’t come so that he never has to speak with her again or that she does so that’s isn’t the last time they every speak.

Either way he called, he should have told her he wanted to call. He shouldn’t have admitted it was his sister who made him.

What kind of man admits his sister forced him to call the love of his life.

Yeah. Just…..

Yeah.

He vainly hopes that his subconscious won’t torture him with this moment for the next decade of his life. But, it will.

There is no doubt about that.

**********

By some miracle she shows up anyway. She shows up and teases him and smiles at him and it’s so refreshing it reminds him of why he loves her the way he does. She claims he is addicted to hardship. He suggests she doesn’t have much room to talk.

It makes her smile

Her job isn’t enjoyable, but it’s rewarding. Fulfilling.

So she knows why he is going to Guyana. And in that moment that lingers afterwards the Dmitri in the little box shines through. Leaving will not be enjoyable, but if it gives her the life that she wants, if it gives her a chance to move on without him, and that’s what she wants, well then…

It will be no where near enjoyable for him, but yes, perhaps very fulfilling.

And he knows she see the pain in his eyes, because it is suddenly so very clear in hers.

But she walks away, and he goes home to pack.

**********

It’s late, bordering on early, when the buzzer to his sister’s place goes off. He wonders if she changed her mind and forgot her key or something. Despite the ruse to get him to see Stevie, Talia really was seeing someone, and she had said she want to actually get some sleep, not listen to him pack all night, so she was going to stay over there.

The buzzer goes of again, then again. It’s definitely Talia, and though he loves his sister, he really doesn’t want to see her overly sympathetic face right now.

When he opens the door and it’s Stevie he is shocked. Like the lock down, stay cool, there is a rational reason for this, don’t let you mind run wild kind of shocked.

She is all kinds of stirred up, shifting her weight constantly one foot then back to the other then again, almost bouncing as she does.

She’s almost pissed, and he waits it out. The rambling about the other guy because he sees the pain and he doesn’t yet know what it means. And she asks favor, she wants him to tell her they are through.

And she knows he can’t, but she makes the case anyway.

And her eyes are glassy when she says every time she sees him…

Every time she sees him what?

He doesn’t even realize he says it out loud.

And then for the first time, for the first time in 3 years, he really sees the truth of how she feels. She didn’t move on. There was no moving on for her either. She went through the motions, she convinced herself she was getting better, but she is like him.

There is no moving on, and the second that he was back, she had no choice. The other guy didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he was perfect. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t complicated. None of it mattered because every time she saw him.

Every time.

She just wanted…

And then he was through the door and he was kissing her, and she was kissing him back. And the heat between them burned. It burned everything.

And he swung her through the door back against the wall and kissed her with every bit of everything that had been trapped since the day they said goodbye on the runway.He tastes the tang of salt on her lips and she is crying.

But when he looks at her with concern she smiles, and he swears its the world’s most blissful smile, and he knows the tears are those of relief.

They are the tears of someone who never thought they would see home again, but against all odds here they are.

Home.

**********

They break away with her whispered, “Are we gonna stand here all night?”

And of course they are not, and her teasing question is all he needs to confirm this is what she wants. And then they are up the stairs and in the apartment, he skips the grand tour guiding her to the bedroom. She doesn’t complain.

Her shirt is on his floor and that sight alone captures his interest, though not nearly so much as the sight of her lean body stretched out on his bed, her eyes blown wide in the world’s most enticing come and get me kind of way.

They always used to rush. The first time through. So desperate to take the edge off, but not this time. He wants the moment she came back to him to be something that is burned into her memory forever.

Her pants and his shirt join hers on the floor.

His hands are slow and sure moving over her body like a painters brush. His lips capturing every sigh and moan. He pulls her back against his chest. And her bra joins the growing pile of fabric.

His hands never stop moving, and against her neck and in her ear he whispers all the things he has longed for since the day he left. All the things she never read in the x-rated versions of those letters he wrote. All this things his mind tortured him with in his sleep. And he promises he will never have enough of her.

He promises there is no such thing as enough of her.

And when there was finally nothing but skin between them, and then nothing at all he told her to look at him. To watch. He begged her to keep her eyes open to see what it was that they were. And she did until it was all too much and she was coming apart in his hands quaking with the relief and agony of it all.

And just as before her body rose to his again. And this time it was different, their bodies taking control demanding more. Harder. Faster. To make up for the lost time. To punish them for the long absence. There was little gentleness, just need. That drove them to exhaustion.

But even that was not enough, and in the night their desire pulled at them even in sleep. And they came together again in the dark with only touch to guide them. He treasured every whimper and moan. Every scratch and bite. Every eye’s wide plea for the end that was so close.

He held her as her body quaked in the aftermath, and pleaded with him to be there when she opened his eyes.

And he swore that he would.

He swore that he always would.

Be there.


End file.
